Studying buildings can be a rich entry point into emerging cultural geographies. The archipelago of Chiloé in southern Chile is experiencing rapid change since the country’s extreme turn toward neoliberal governance in the 1970s. Once a rural, communal, and sea-faring region, it has been transformed by industrial aquaculture in recent decades which has driven a new urban landscapes and consumer-oriented lifestyles. This paper offers findings from an ethnographic study of changing consumption geographies, from iconic tourist sites linked to the region’s rich heritage geographies, to the new corporate retailers and shopping malls. Specifically, the new shopping mall clashes with the heritage and tourist landscape of colonial era churches and other unique heritage architectures that have captured the attention of tourists and investors. We glimpse a dynamic architectural geography in flux, as an array of buildings pulls the population in multiple directions at once, making it an ideal case study of the competing forces of what Deleuze and Guattari called de- and re-territorialization, an appropriate analytic for understanding the powerful forces of commodification.

研究建筑可以成为进入新兴文化地理的丰富切入点。自 1970 年代智利极端转向新自由主义治理以来，智利南部的奇洛埃群岛正在经历快速变化。它曾经是一个农村、公共和航海地区，近几十年来已经被工业水产养殖所改变，这推动了新的城市景观和以消费者为导向的生活方式。本文提供了对不断变化的消费地理的民族志研究的结果，从与该地区丰富的遗产地理相关的标志性旅游景点，到新的企业零售商和购物中心。具体来说，新的购物中心与殖民时代教堂和其他吸引游客和投资者注意力的独特遗产建筑的遗产和旅游景观发生冲突。